Jewelry Making

There is just something about spring and summer time that makes me want to start all of the crafts. I just don’t know what it is but before I know it I have like a million different things started ranging from sewing, knitting, jewelry making, and now spinning. It’s taking every ounce of will power I have to not cast-on at least two summer sweaters right now.

The reason I am not starting any summer sweaters is because that is the thing I want to do so I’m making myself finish these two things first:

My follow your arrow mystery KAL that got put to the side because of the Olypmics.

The Downeast sweater, which you heard about last post. Sorry for the poor quality Iphone picture again.

Yep, remember those two things. They still aren’t finished. The NEED to be finished, if I don’t finish them now they probably won’t ever be finished.

Okay enough about those old things, here are all the things that I have been doing which is another reason why those old things haven’t been worked on.

I have been making stitch markers.

I have been making bracelets.

And I just got a spindle so I have been spinning!

I will have a post about all of my spinning next week. So far I have been really enjoying it and I think so far I am doing decent.

Oh and to top it all off I have an urge to start sewing again so I picked up some fabric to make some project bags.

What have you been doing lately? Does spring and summer have wanting to try and start all sorts of crafts?

So today I went antiquing for the first time in about 6 to 8 months, the last times I had went out I wasn’t very successful, but I had a good feeling about this time. And boy was I right! I found so many awesome cute things and spent way too much money, but hey when will I come across stuff like it again?

So first up are these awesome pencil sharpeners. Yes I said pencil sharpeners, they work and there are different things on each sharpener that moves like you can crank the clock and move the needle up and down on the sewing machine. They are so cool! Superfluous, but cool nonetheless.

Now this stuff is for jewelry making whenever I feel inspired to put down my knitting needles and design again. I had been looking for small skeleton keys like that for awhile so I couldn’t pass that up and then the other things are crystals from chandeliers they are really pretty and all of the stuff will make great charms.

Now all of the rest are these are buttons I found, yes I kind of went button crazy, but can you blame me? They are all so unique and different. Now the ones at the very beginning with the green buttons, bronze buttons, and the Celtic looking buttons all came together in one little baggy with this weird little thing pictured below, I’m not quite sure what it is or why it was in there but now I own it too.

To support the fact that I am going button crazy I will also show you my latest purchase from etsy, but in my defense I bought/went searching for these buttons, for my up and coming soon to be finished within the next two months cardigan/knitting projects. I got them from the etsy shop Add Vintage. I am in love with this shop, they have so many different, pretty, and interesting antique buttons that are unused/dead stock and they actually know the time period and story behind some of them. I will definitely shop there again for buttons.

The small ones are for my Grace cardigan and when I get around to making my Georgia cardigan. The brown ones on the end are for either my chocolate stout or pontos and the other ones were just so pretty I figured why not, I wasn’t expecting to find so many interesting ones while antiquing, that usually doesn’t happen. Generally I only find two or three sets of buttons I like while antiquing.

The final purchase of the day is going to eventually be made into a necklace holder like the one seen here on etsy. I bought these two to add to the one I had at home, I only need to find two or three more, which is super exciting.

Here’s the two new ones with the one that I had saved from an old cabinet at our house that was getting a new knob.

And just because I generally always post something about knitting here is a picture of my chocolate stout thus far, it is coming along very nicely! I am pretty much on track for getting everything I want to get finished during the luvinthemommyhoods summer sweater KAL. Its still not too late to join in and the sponsors for this KAL are amazing!

Well this weekend I have big knitting and jewelry making plans, on top of the fact that I would like to work on my crocheting skills some.

Everything I want to work on this weekend. My gemini, my strathcona, look through the knitscene because it has some articles I would really like to read, fix a necklace, and make a necklace for a friend. Also I would like to make up some cards and write to a few friends.

All of that is all well in good, but I have an obstacle standing in my way. That obstacle is called the end of the semester grad school paper fiasco, as with most college students when warm weather hits with the combination of the end of semester fast approaching I have less and less desire to actually do homework. So I have a stack of homework, papers, and reading I need to do, but I have new yarn and very exciting summer projects to cast on.

Here is the dreaded stack of homework. I don’t know if I talked about this before, but grad school is a lot more work than undergrad and the professors are way more critical.

Well even though I have that homework I still plan on doing everything I want to do this weekend and the homework. Wish me luck on completing all of my endeavors.

Fun fact daffodils are one of my favorite flowers. This picture was taken in my front yard.

Well most recently my life has basically been consumed by grad school work, which is kind of miserable, but also good because it means the end of the semester is in sight. But though I have been consumed by school work with all of this nice spring weather I have been really inspired. I have been so inspired that I started making jewelry again. I haven’t made any new jewelry since November and those were just copies of ones I have already made.

In the past two days I have made 5 new necklaces and fixed two for various reasons mainly because I thought something looked sloppy. So here’s some pictures of the newly finished projects and a group shot of all of my necklaces that I have made and still have in my possession at the current moment.

All of my necklaces together. I just love how they all look when they are together like that.

This one and the next one I made because I saw Eliza from if&any make some and I really liked them and wanted to make one or two for me.

Here’s the second one I made. I personally like the first one better. And the one to the right is another new necklace I made.

Here’s a group shot of all of the new necklaces.

And well this I think is my favorite out of all of the new ones I made this week so far.

In other news my friend Alicia and I started our KAL together via skype on April 1st. We had a lovely time skyping and knitting together and then this past weekend I went down to visit with her and some other friends. Basically for the whole day Saturday and part of Sunday we worked on our strathcona (a Jane Richmond design) scarves. At the current moment I am over halfway done. I just passed the center mark of the scarf. Overall I really love the pattern, which seems to be the general feeling I have for all of Jane Richmond’s designs. I just love the aesthetic to them, they are just a fun simple knit with just enough of a twist to make them interesting. This scarf is no different the design of it is great and I can’t wait to finish it so I can wear it, it’s definitely is going to be a go to spring/summer scarf in my close, but I doubt I will only limit it to those two seasons.

Now it’s not only the pattern and design that makes a project great, but a good yarn makes a lot of difference and boy is this yarn wonderful. I usually don’t like working with cotton yarns, but this yarn is totally an exception to the rule. The yarn is Riveting from Kollage yarns it is 100% recycled yarn from recycled blue jeans. My friend Alicia and I are both super happy with this yarn and know that we will use it again, we were considering using it to make a 3/4 length cardigan or something.

Here’s a pictured of my Strathcona so far.

Over all I love this scarf, pattern, design, and yarn and totally recommend it to anyone.

Well I finished my Jane RichmondClassic Raglan last night as I hoped to, and it turned out great! I think next time though I will make it the next size down because I prefer my stuff a little more fitted, but I do love this sweater. It was just so simple and fun, what made it even better was that I could read my counseling books while making it so I was able to multitask. Generally while I am doing my school work, especially when it is reading my mind tends to drift from focusing on reading to basically everything else in the room and by knitting it helped me focus. It was great, I got so much reading accomplished while working on this sweater.

I didn’t change a thing from the pattern because it was perfect. All in all, I would recommend this sweater pattern to anyone, it would be a great pattern for beginners, and it is enjoyable for the more seasoned knitter as well. Luckily I finished this sweater last night because today was a perfect day for pictures, the sun was out just enough to take some decent pictures. Also the necklace I am wearing is one of my very own designs! What do you think?

In other news though, I have a ton of other on going projects and projects that people have ordered from me, I have decided to join in on my first KAL hosted by Celtic Cast On. The project is the business casual sock pattern by Tanis Lavallee. If you are interested in joining along click here: Celtic Cast On. Cast on starts February 4th 2013 with the bind off date being March 25th 2013 so that will give me 8 weeks to complete the socks. And by doing this I will be one more pair of socks closer to reaching my goal of making 4 socks by December 31st 2013. So far I have two pairs started so starting this one will make 3 out of 4 socks started. Also with it being a KAL I will stay motivated on completing it in a reasonable amount of time.